1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a computer system having a function for intercepting lewd/violent programs, and more particularly, relates to a computer system capable of executing application programs according to a set security grade and an application program grade and a method for controlling access of such application programs.
2. Related Art
Computer programs available for home multi-media computer systems today, like their predecessor video programs for viewing on television receivers, video cassette recorders, and cable boxes, vary greatly in their content of such things as violence, nudity, depictions of sexual acts, strong language, or other things many people may regard as obscene or otherwise objectionable. Many pornographic or extremely violent computer game programs intended for adults have become readily accessible to unintended audiences such as teenagers and children, and increasingly unmanageable by distributors and parents.
Unlike television receivers, video cassette recorders, and cable boxes in which parental control systems and censorship supervision systems are available for parents to control the video viewing of undesirable programs however, home computer systems have not provided parents with a comprehensive control over pornographic or extremely violent computer programs which may be accessed by teenagers and children left unattended at home. For example, contemporary parental control techniques for television receivers and cable boxes are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,930,160 for Automatic Censorship Of Video Programs issued to Vogcl, U.S. Pat. No. 5,382,983 for Apparatus And Method For Total Parental Control Of Television Use issued to Kwoh et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,387,942 for System For Controlling Reception Of Video Signals issued to Lemelson, U.S. Pat. No. 5,485,518 for Electronic Media Program Recognition And Choice issued to Hunter et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,550,575 for Viewer Discretion Television Program Control System issued to West et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,583,576 for Rating-Dependent Parental Lock-Out For Television Reception issued to Perlman et al. Video viewing censoring systems for video cassette recorders may be disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,214,556 for Video Cassette Recorder Protection System issued to Kilbel, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,548,345 for Video Viewing Censoring Supervision System issued to Brian et al. In general, there are essentially two techniques to parental control of viewing of undesirable video programs on televisions or video cassette recorders. The first technique requires participation of individuals at home to invariably control admission of video programs that fail to satisfy their own content criteria. The second technique requires participation of broadcasters in what is generally termed a "V-chip" approach. A program classification code which represents an arbitrary number of designations for rating the program content according to levels of violence, graphic sex, obscenity or other undesirable content is encoded into a video signal for transmission purposes. Before reaching the picture generation elements of the television receiver, the video signal is received by control circuitry which extracts the program classification code therefrom for comparison with a preselected reception code which represents the program content which is desired to either block or allow the reception of the video signal by the television receiver.
Despite of a litany of parental control and censorship supervision systems that are available for television receivers, video cassette recorders and cable boxes, I have observed however, that none is provided for home computer systems. Consequently, there is no effective means currently available for home computer systems to limit access to pornographic programs or extremely violent computer games.